Elegant Pitstops Key to Multi-modal/Sustainable Transportation

Mark Kessler, architect and UC Davis Professor, will soon publish a book on the historical aspects of San Francisco's 1920s-era garages. On March 3-4, 2012, he exhibited a set of photographs of these garages at the Old Mint Building (5th & Mission). He gave a captivating lecture entitled "Elegant Pitstops--The Historicist Garages of San Francisco" in which he discussed the historical value of these buildings that are often invisible to the passerby. When combined with innovative land use-transportation policy, these historic resources could play an key, neighborhood-based, intermediate role in creating a fully funtional multi-modal and sustainable transportation system for 21st century San Francisco.

Over the past two years in response to a residential conversion project proposed for one of the elegant pitstops at 1945 Hyde Street, the Russian Hill Community Association (RHCA) developed a non-NIMBY argument for retaining these buildings in transportation use, in part based on Professor Kessler's research. The idea is to retain the transportation use on the sites, but evolved from 20th century neighborhood auto storage/repair to a 21st century neighborhood-level multi-modal transit center use required for a fully functioning multi-modal and sustainable transportation system.

Some slides of Professor Kessler's lecture follow below, along with further discussion of this innovative land use/transportation concept call Neighborhood Transit Centers (NTC). Further information can be found here, including additional links to Professor Kessler's research report, summaries of the NTC idea, a map of the existing garage locations, and a short KGO video.

The NTC Idea

While 90 percent of U.S. settlement patterns (cities, suburbs, and related agglomerations) are not dense enough to support a bus system, the view towards the future is increasingly focused on multi-modal transportation systems, often also using the adjective "sustainable."

Most concepts of multi-modal are really bi-modal (cars and busses) with a minor amount of incidental bike and pedestrian trips. Developed in full, multi-modal means seamless and immediate access to and use of the right transportation mode for the type of trip, whether it be a short walk to the corner store or a seven-mode link up from one's house to the airport to the business meeting or travel trip of an international destination. If the system is sustainable, well, let's just say for simplicity that no CO2 would be emitted from any of the trip modes.

Both multi-modal and sustainable transportation systems imply particular types of land use as well--sufficient diversity of land uses and 5+ minute pedestrian access to meeting the majority of daily needs, along with compact settlement patters of sufficient density to support the mass transit components. However, there is little discussion of the land use implications and requirements for a successful, fully-functioning multi-modal and sustainable transportation system. If the full set of modes (walk, bike, bus, light/heavy/high-speed train, airplane, taxi, private autos and bikes, carshare, bikeshare, electric and hydrogen vehicles) are to be available where and when they are needed, some intermediate, neighborhood-level storage/access points would be needed. Yet, what existing uses could be adapted and reserved for such neighborhood level use?

In the few dense U.S. cities, such as San Francisco, a collection of 1920's-era historicist neighborhood garages provide the perfect vehicle (pun intended) to transition an older 20th century auto-oriented parking transportation use to the new, 21st century neighborhood level access point for a multi-modal and sustainable transit/transportation system. As an added bonus, such an evolution of use would continue the historic land use (neighborhood auto storage/repair)  function--transportation--in a new form (neighborhood multimodal-sustainable transit access), thereby ensuring full historic integrity. In contrast, changes to other uses, such as residential, damage historical integrity by not maintaining the historic land use nor interior structure.

Because all of these buildings are already located in San Francisco's neighborhood's, they reserve a physical place in the neighborhood for the intermediate neighborhood-level transit centers required for a fully functioning multi-modal and sustainable transportation system. Because most, if not all of these historicist garages are likely identified by planning code as non-conforming uses, and in any case the Planning Code permits changes of use by right, San Francisco is at risk of losing not only the full historic integrity of the 150 or so remaining historicist garages, but their neighborhood-embedded location for a continued transportation use required by successful multi-modal and sustainable transportation system. San Francisco is poised to lose a valuable but as yet invisible land use asset because the Planning Code and planning is presently blind to this potential land use asset of an evolving sustainable economy and associated multi-modal transportation system. It does not have to be that way, but for the moment it is.

Slides - Elegant Pitstops Lecture